Step 8 – Judy A. – Wilson House Big Book Workshop Retreat – 2020

basket that's been whispered among us is who keeps making the sweets, who keeps making the desserts. And since you guys, your hands are numb from clapping, we're going to clap for Miss Sandy F. You want to record us? Let her know that we send our love right back to her. And, yeah. He's just a courier. He's a mule. He's a mule for the sweets, and we thank you for that. But thanks, Sandy. You thought it would be chocolate mousse, wouldn't you? No, it's chocolate mule. Joe's got a nickname. Oh, that's hilarious. All right, this is not the active firehouse. Put away your phones, and somebody actually said, hey, could you tell them to honestly, just please, just put away your phones. And do that with what you will. And let's see here. We're going to be passing the gratitude basket around. Who's got the gratitude basket? If you missed the firehouse, or if you want to give more, we can jab you in the ribs if you want. But this is all going to go to... Go to Wilson House. And we're going to show them our love. And actually, don't tell Berta. We're going to present her with the money here in just a little bit. So we're going to get that ready. But first, we need to pass it around so we don't miss anybody who might have missed or anybody who wants to give again. What else am I missing? What's the score? It's like music to my ears. You guys are good. Yeah, just not on. Just not on the railroad tracks. Fantastic. Do I have any other notes here? Sorry. God has to do the work. Pass the gratitude basket. Watch out for the fire. Yeah, we did the score. Yeah. We did the score. Thank you. There you go. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. I'm just going to... I'm just going to... I'm just going to... I'm just going to hand it. We got the basket going around? All right. Time for me to shut up. Thanks, guys. All right. All right. Welcome back, everybody. My name is Chris, and I am an alcoholic. So the last section was on step six and seven. I want to tell a story because here's what I believe. I believe that the taking of each step gives you the grace and power to take the next one. And I remember when I first was coming to the conclusion that I was going to need to do the steps. I remember looking at step nine and saying, oh, no. You know, oh, no. Like, pay the money back. Go and admit that I was wrong. Not to them. Not to them. I'll never be able to do that. So I thought that that was going to be too much of a step for me. And I believe today. That if you're new and if you're at the beginning of the steps, you may feel that same way. It's been my experience that the taking of each step gives you the grace and the power to move to the next one. And when I look at step eight and I look at step nine, I've got a story that kind of fits in a little bit with all of those steps. Let's say we're really, really high. And I'm humbly asking God, please. You know, my life has been a mess. I suffer from alcoholism, which is a progressively fatal illness. And you don't check out, you know, looking good at the end of that illness. So, you know, please help me. There was an individual that I was working with about 20 years ago. And he was rough. You know, he grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. I mean, he came from he came from what I would consider a murderous family background. I mean, it was just really, really bad. And he ended up he ended up in our area going to meetings in our area. He like came out of a blackout and he had a horse farm in Burnsville, New Jersey, like literally. And he was making decent money because he had some construction businesses, some family stuff going on. But. But he became willing. When he. Showed up in our meetings, he was doing like twenty eight percocets a day and, you know, gallons of booze. He was absolutely shattered and really came in in rough shape. And he was he was pretty much rendered mute for like the first six months. We didn't really know who he was or anything. He was just coming to meetings. And and he started the clouds started to dissipate a little bit. And he ended up he ended up asking me to sponsor him. And by that time, I was. I was taking people through the steps. If I was sponsoring. Absolutely. And and we're we're on the way to an A.A. meeting. And we stopped at a convenience store to get a cup of coffee. And as we're walking out of this convenience store, I see him do this. He made a quick grab and had something in his pocket as we were walking out the door. And we get up. We get outside the door. I go. I go, hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did you just steal a pack of cigarettes? You know, right off the counter. Right. And he goes, no. And I go, let me ask you this way. Did you grab a pack of cigarettes on the way out and not pay for them? And he goes, yeah. So I go, then you stole a pack of cigarettes. He goes, no. I go, what do you mean? No, you didn't pay for me. He goes. He goes, that was from the rack up front. I go, what do you mean by that? He goes, that's a rack up front. They got budgets for that. You're a chump if you don't take those. And so we had a sponsorship summit right then and there. You know what I mean? Like, pulled out the dictionary and, you know, was looking up rigorous, you know. And he finally got it. He finally got it. Right? Now, this guy was willing. This guy was willing to go through these steps. So, you know what he ended up doing? He ended up putting an envelope together for about 20 or 30 or 40, I can't remember, convenience stores. All the places that he remembers, you know, lifting from. And he put a bunch of money. Money wasn't his problem. He put a bunch of money in these envelopes and he started to go around to these convenience stores saying, you know, money. I'm an alcoholic. I stole all this stuff. I need to make this right. I'll never get over my drinking. Blah, blah, blah. And he would hand the person the envelope with all the money in it. And he did this at convenience store after convenience store after convenience store. And finally he got done. Now, the point of the story is this. I'll ask the question. Do you think he still steals cigarettes after an experience like that? No. No. I believe. I believe that. I believe the best possible spiritual atmosphere for the removal of our character defects is the willingness that we keep putting forth as we keep moving through these steps. I've found, you know, in my own experience, I've got character defects, you know, and I find that if I'm really adherent to steps 10 and steps 9 and steps 10 and steps 9, I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. And I go and I make direct amends for where these character defects have caused harm. The character defects, if they don't get removed, they get put into a manageable package. You know, I'm never going to be perfect. And that's kind of good news. I don't think, I don't even like perfect people. You know, I need to. Have you ever had like a perfect person come over your house? Make you look bad? You know what I mean? Like, it really isn't about perfection. It's really, it's about, it's about progress. And it's about adhering to these spiritual principles. Now, step 9, you know, my first attempt at step 9 was not great. You know, there was some relationships in my life that really, I felt the need to, you know, try to repair. So, you know, not really understanding this process anywhere near the way I do now. Not really having a lot of sponsorship guidance. You know, I went about the business of, you know, trying to make my apologies. And some of these went okay and some of them didn't. You know, I, you know, I remember, I remember making an apology to, you know, my first ex-wife. You know, making this, oh, sorry, you know. And I said, you know, I'm sorry. You know, I'm sorry. You know, I'm sorry. You know, I'm sorry. You ruined my life. You know, she's, sorry. You know, you know what I mean? Here, you know, here's the thing. It's really not, although an apology is most of the time something that's going to be incorporated into an amends, the point of the amends is to set right the rules. Set right the wrong. The point in the amends is to amend something, you know, means to fix it or to make it right. Now, in the book, in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, it asks us to become willing to make amends to them all. You know, I know many of us come in here and we're willing to make amends to the some. You know, but this is, this is a program where we're supposed to become willing to make amends to them all. And there's, there's, there's prayers if we're not ready to make amends to everybody. There's, if there's some that we're unwilling to make amends to, there's prayers, you know, set up for us to pray for the willingness. Now, as I set out, so, you know, I went through the Joe and Charlie tapes, then I very quickly discovered the Joe Hawk Salvation Army tapes. And, and they were very, very instructive. They were, I liked them much better than, than Joe and Charlie when I discovered them. They were, they were, they were clearer to me. I could understand what they're talking about, what he could, what he was talking about a little bit more. And I became convinced that I need to, I need to make amends to them all. I need to do these amends. Now, how those, how those tapes asked me to do my eight-step list was like this, on index cards. Again, if you make your, I don't care how you make your list. This is, this is what I've been doing ever since I started to do it. And it works, it works for me. But putting the person or the institution on an index card, and then the harm that I'm clear on, and, and it can't be a harm like I was a jerk or it has, it has to be more specific. We, we need to be very, very specific about how we've harmed somebody. And you put that on the card. And then you put how to contact the person. And what I do today with these eight-step cards is before I let somebody run off and start making their amends, because they'll make their amends to the last eight girlfriends they had first or something, you know. See? What kind of trouble they can stir up with that. But before, you know, before I let them run off and start doing amends, what I do today is I have them come over with their cards. And we sit and we go over each card. And we come to a consensus on is the, is it appropriate to make this amend? Will anyone be negatively impacted by this amend? What would the appropriate? What would the appropriate approach look like? How, how should you approach the person on the amend card? And, and what, what, what would be, you know, what would be the wrong that would need to be made right? And, and I've, you know, I've done that with two people this month have shown up, shown up with their cards. And, and I like doing it that way because I want to be real careful about how make them, how, how somebody makes amends. I'll, I'll, I'll make amends. I'll, I'll make amends. I'll, I'll make amends. I'll, I'll make amends. I'll tell two stories about amends gone wrong. And this can happen pretty easily. This one, this one guy didn't follow my instructions and didn't come over with his amends cards and started on his amends right away. Now, what, what he had done is, and many of us are guilty of this. There, there was, you know, he was single and he had maybe eight years. And there was, there was a, a, a new wife. There was a new woman who showed up in our group and she had maybe four or five months. And he started, I, I'm not even going to call it a relationship. It was more of like a hit and run, right? And, and, and, and, and, you know, he's got, and he, you know, she showed up on his amends cards as she should have, right? But instead of conferring with me, he, he asked her to go to have coffee with her. And he basically told her this. Listen, I was attracted to you. I didn't want to get in a relationship with you or anything. You know, I was, you know, I, you know, I just, I kind of wanted to have sex with you. So I'm sorry. So she like, she, she ran out of the place in tears and he's coming to me. I don't know what I did wrong, man. You know, she was crying and I'm like, you idiot. You know, what, what, what did he just tell her? You know what I mean? It's just horrible. It's just horrible. So, so I always, I, I want to go over this stuff. I want to go over this stuff with another individual ran off and made amends to his ex, to his wife, to his wife, to the wife he was married to. And what, what he did was he said, you know, I need to, I need to tell you about some stuff. You know, over the past 10 years, I've had three affairs with people at work. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Absolutely lunatic. She beat him so badly he almost lost an eye and I mean kicking him, you know, and and that was bad enough, right. That was bad enough, but she absolutely insisted on knowing who the three women were and he told her and she B because she was an attorney. sued them. So just turmoil, insane, crazy turmoil. Now, if you read the black part of the book, it warns us about things like this, you know? It tells us that, you know, we don't have a right to involve anybody else, you know? Should we tell the missus that we've stepped out? Not always, we think, is basically what the... You know, if it serves a positive purpose, if she knows any way we admit we're... You know, there's all this 1939 language, but you can interpret it, if you've got a good sponsor, on what you're supposed to do with this stuff. Now, there's amends for financials, you know? Many of us owe money. The many is a typo. It's like all of us owe money. You know, we're alcoholic, we owe money. How do we go about paying that back? Now, you know, I was kind of lucky. I didn't owe a lot, but I did start to put... I started to put envelopes together. One of the things I did was I caught up on my child support, and I not only gave my child support for 15 years, I gave additional money on top of that for specific things, things I didn't even have to do. I just knew that I needed to do that. There were a couple of institutions that I owed money. I went back and I knocked on the door. There was even one store. I went to one of the stores that I went to, and I gave them a 50, and they gave me change for 100. And I thought that was fair. The thing was, is it bothered me. I never forgot about it. I always knew it was wrong. So I went back to the store, and I admitted it, and I paid back the extra change that I got. So I did my financials. One of the things about doing your financials, if you've done your financials, you'll have your money. If you have not done your financial amends, you have their money. It's better to have your money. You know what I mean? I'm not talking about mortgages and car payments. That's a legitimate type of business transaction. I'm talking about, oh, so you stiffed somebody. Then until that money... And then somebody goes back to them, you're not going to have your own money. You're going to have their money. And there's something about being clean with all that. There were some criminal things that I had to take care of. Remember I said I was getting letters from Florida fleeing to avoid prosecution? Well, what had happened in Florida was this. I went down there to go to college, and I spent... I spent three and a half years there going to college, and I did get six credits. But most of the time, I was just partying with lunatics, lunatics. My roommate was a Quaalude dealer. I mean, it went south quick. And I started to crash a lot of cars down there, get a lot of DUIs. I would come to in jail not knowing I was there. Even though am not autour de mi seu. Sons de fotografia. And I was openly ¡uh¡ on the farm, brother, because that was not my job. I was used to it and that was new for me than what Aetna for me was like. And it was never requiring me to run for office more than a month just because I loved and wanted to run for office. Sons de fotografia, of course, I learned from them and allowed me to shoot. Fired the shot every half a minute. But that's certainly not my way, right? Not a great way in the in-barel Kerry of women 아니야 which has nothing to do with Duke. Were you oral in New York City in 1980? What happened... I was an outside man from no where. I worked by anzu as an Isso wants to impressive soporte damage. upset that you've disturbed their sleep. So, I mean, all this stuff happened, and there was ambulance bills, and community service, and fines, and court dates. And back in New Jersey, mom needed some help around the house. You know, what can I tell you? So I just went home, and I didn't deal with any of this stuff. So it's nine-step time. Guess what? You know, I'm dealing with every single one of them. I had to make amends to the Salvation Army, to the, you know, pay off all these fines, community service, all this stuff. But finally, finally I got all that stuff done, and I was able to retain my New Jersey driver's license, which was good. But I also could go to Florida, to Disney World, without warrants being, you know, out on my arrest down there, which was a good thing. So I did some of the criminal things. One of the things that is true about me that, you know, I was never happy about was I was not a good son. In my case, what happened was, three days into my 12th birthday, my mother walked in and said my father had died at work that day, right? So, you know, I can trace a lot of my behavior back to that moment. That moment I became dislocated from, and no more God, and a lot of different things happened right at that pivotal point. I started to do crimes and things like that. So, you know, I see that that was a very, very impactful thing. But, you know, my mother really trying to help and trying to be supportive and trying to... to protect me and all this stuff. You would not believe how bad of a son I was. You know, I was not respectful to her. I was belligerent, you know, stealing money from her, crashing her cars, burning her house down twice. You know, great kid you got there, you know, Mrs. Schroeder. Having monstrous parties where she'd come home and there'd be a hundred people parked on the street, on the front lawn. You know, just crazy stuff like that. I was a terrible kid. And she was putting up with it because my father had died and she didn't know what to do and all this stuff. So I get sober. And you don't just go to mom and say, sorry about that, you know. There's an approach and there's a demonstration, but there's a lifetime of making up for something like that. So from January 1st, 1990, you know, when I pulled my head out of the clouds, I started on a journey to try to make things right for her, to keep the house up for her, you know, to move out. You know, it was like, what a mess, you know. I'm like 34, you know. So, so, to make sure that her car ran, to go and get the prescriptions because she wasn't in really good health. And then toward the end of her life, she wanted her last days to be in her house. So I did everything I possibly could, including marrying a hospice nurse to be able to do that, right? Andrea will love that. So, so, so, so literally, you know, I would have married Andrea anyway. I didn't say that. Just happened to be a hospice nurse. But, but what, what I made sure of was, was the hospital bed was there, the in-home care, the traveling nurse association or whatever they were. You know, all that stuff, the everything was just, the TV was right where she needed it. All that stuff I made sure. And, and you know what? In her, in her last moments, you know, me and my brother and my sister were holding her hand. And I had told her, it's okay. You can, you can go. We're all all right. You have, you have given us the best of what you have. You have taught us all the important lessons in life. We're going to be okay. It's okay to go. And I, I was, I was able to do that, you know, with, with, with my mother. There's nothing that will put more muscle in your recovery than the ninth step. There's nothing that will, that will, that will give you more power and more freedom. Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Then the ninth step, I believe this whole Alcoholics Anonymous thing is about power. And it's about freedom. It's about gaining access to a power that can do for you what you cannot do for yourself. It will enable you to step up where you need to step up this power. Where we used to go step out, we can now step up. And it's a power that works in us and through us. It's amazing. Alcoholics Anonymous promises you, you can get, you know, you can gain access to the actual power of God. The church doesn't even do that, you know, most of the time. But that's an actual promise, and that's an actual experience that most of us have, the people, especially the people who've been diligent about these steps. So we gain access to this power, which is such a cool thing. And freedom, freedom also, freedom from the bondage of self. Freedom from the emotional torment that I would put myself through day after day after day. I'm pretty calm in just about any situation I'm in today. I mean, you know, I've experienced running large corporate pieces of business where, you know, it's like $20 billion budget. I've got 54 people working for me and hundreds of contractors, and I'm in charge of all this, and I do the budget, and I do the union, and I do all this stuff. And on my own, I never would have been able to pull that off. On my own, I feel like an imposter. If these people only knew, you know, they'd carry me out on a rail. That's me on my own. With the power of God, I run this crap, you know, and I do a good job about it. The freedom, the freedom from the bondage of self to be able to step out, you know, even going to the high school parties, I would have to drink a six-pack of beer before I'd leave the house to go to a party. I'd need that, and drinking and driving? I totaled nine cars in drunken blackouts. I come from a time when friends let friends drive drunk. You know what I mean? It was legal, you know? I mean, I always thought you approach the road with confidence. You know what I mean? You get a bottle of scotch, you know? So how about the freedom from that anxiety? How about that freedom from depression? How about the freedom from, you know, the lack of self-esteem? You gain freedom over that stuff, and you can do what you need to do, and you can be where you need to be, right? And, and nothing puts, puts that power and that freedom into your life more than cleaning up the past. How about having nobody out there that you've got any problem with, that you haven't come face to face with? How about that? You know, and I come from a sponsorship line where they push that. They, they want you to get to that place. So we, we come from a sponsorship line where, you know, that's kind of what they expect. So, so the ninth step, we hear the promises read over and over at the closed-minded discussion meetings, and people don't really, they don't understand them in context. They're like, well, I don't have the promises yet, you know? Well, you don't even have a sponsor yet, you know? You're a long way away from those promises. It's not like a carrot, you know? It's cause and effect. It's cause and effect. You, Do these actions. You get these results. And I do know a new freedom and a new happiness. You know, I can comprehend what serenity is because I feel it most of the time. And all those wonderful promises that they offer in Step 9. And, you know, I'm really, really, really, really grateful to be here. But, you know, the last amends. I want to share about the last amends that I did. Like formal amends. So I'm married 10 years. I'm with Andrea for like 10 years, right? And we're really close. And sometimes when you get really close to somebody, you're not thinking about I need to make amends. You know, I'm trying my best here and all that. But I go through the steps. And some stuff ends up on my A-step list. And I sit down and I do a direct amends with her. And how I've been taught to do amends is you admit your harms. You admit your faults as accurately as possible. You express the regret for doing that. And then you ask three questions. This is something else that comes from my sponsorship line. And the first question is, have I left anything out? Come on, folks. We're selfish and self-centered at core. We're going to think we heard them over here. And we could have heard them here. You know what I mean? And I asked that question. And she said, no. No. You were pretty clear. And then I asked the second question. Do you need to talk to me about this? Do you need to tell me how my behavior made you feel? And that's kind of an opening. Just clobber me if you want. I mean, tell me. Be really honest. Tell me how this has damaged you or made you feel or whatever. And she goes, no, that's all right. I don't need to do that. And then I ask, what do I need to do to make this right? What would you have me do to set right this wrong? I think it's an important question to ask. Because we can walk away thinking, oh, I apologize. Well, you know, they may not feel any better about this. So what I got out of this particular amends from her was extraordinary. She was overwhelmingly grateful that I had done this. And because of my selfishness and self-centeredness, I wasn't even sure I needed to do it. So again, following the instructions, following the instructions and working at this stuff is extraordinary. And, you know, the people closest to us usually get the most fallout. And I've learned to always stay current with the people that are really close to me. Because I can miss things. I can be a little blind to my own behavior. Um. But how free do you want to be? And that's how I would end the Step 9 talk. You want to really be free? Do your ninth step amends. Right, Judy? Thank you. Okay. I'm really impressed with the number of new people here. And I'm going to be doing a few of them. I'm going to have to do a nice one. So. I love it. And right on with Chris. We come from a very close sponsorship relationship. Up or down the line. Oh, turn me on again. Woo hoo. Green. Green. Got to be green. Thank you, Daniel. So why do we make amends? You know, it's time. We've got some energy from that sixth and seventh step. We prayed about it. And it'd be really easy to let it all drop into a hole right there. Stop on your point of inertia. Boy, I've worked hard. I've looked at everything. Blah. Except that we've got to take this stuff to the street. Because that's where we've lived. We have to take our stuff to the street. There's a reason for that. And that is, I think, among other things, we want to be able to look the way we want. The world in the eye. I don't want to be shucking and jiving with anybody walking down the street. I don't want to be taking any side streets so I don't have to see you. I don't want to be hiding at any meetings. I want to be complete. And it's gotten a little bigger for me over time. I want to be complete with everybody. I haven't harmed everybody. But I want to be complete with everybody. And I don't know. The problem for me is that I'm selfish enough and self-centered enough that I don't really have a clue who I've harmed. And I think a lot of us do not. So I'll talk about that in a minute. You know, there's lots of principles that the book talks about in the ninth step. Among them are things like tact and common sense. So you know, like which of us came in with tact and common sense, I ask you? You know, most alcoholics just sort of overwhelm their way through life. But anyway, so we've had a beginning of a spiritual experience. We continue that with the ninth step. But first we've got to have this thing called an eighth step. And so I think that when we start on our eighth step, we start, you know, I am so impressed with this. I think it's like bringing in the creativity of the universe. You get willing and you sit down. And you've got some time. You've got some time. You've got some stuff that maybe isn't comfortable between you and other people. Maybe you've done some stuff. Maybe you don't even know why. But suddenly, I want to be at a place where I can begin to be comfortable with everybody in my life. What is that going to look like? What price am I willing to pay for that? One of our guys in this kind of family deal sold his house to pay for the drug deals that he had with the IRS. I told him he had done the IRS. He'd not admitted to that before. He didn't have the money. He was selling his house so that he could pay the debt that they didn't even know he owed. And I said, I was a lot newer, you what? It's sort of what I said. And he said, well, I'm willing to go to any length for victory over alcohol for the rest of my life. And I got it, that some of us are willing to go to any length for the rest of our lives. And I said, well, I'm willing to go to any length for victory over alcohol for the rest of my life. And I got it. I got it. I got it. I'm willing to go to any length to clean the deck. So how do I do that? There's different levels. There's the stealing stuff. There's the money owed stuff. How about our emotional creditors? How about our psychic harms? How about the people along the way, like Chris was talking about? What are all these people going to do? What am I going to do with that? And I found amends takes a lot of creative ways, because here we are. We've become willing. We have had some power. And now I think the universe just starts to respond in an entirely different way. Any of you that have done a lot of these know that how many times has somebody said, I have these amends, these people I wrote down, I have no idea how to reach them. I can't find them. And then their phone starts ringing. Oh, I was in town and thought I'd get it. I was in town and thought I'd get it. I was in town and thought I'd get it. I was in town and thought I'd get it. I was in town and thought I'd get it. I was in town and thought I'd get it. I was in town and thought I'd get it. I was in town and thought I'd give it to them. My brother could get a hold of you. Or, I just had a friend and was looking you up. How do we get to that place? So I am convinced I told you earlier that in each of these set of two, I think it's the first step that does the heavy lifting. So in the eighth step, my sponsor explained how he got free from a jail cell. And I took that to heart. He said, you can get free in your eighth step, even before. can ever talk to another human being. And what that looks like for me is that I start to look at each of the amends, each of the people that I have written and maybe some others. I have a whole lot of people that I'm not comfortable with because I'm pretty sure still that they owe me. A lot of people that I'm not comfortable with. And I'm fairly new in sobriety. I just make a list of all the people I can think of and then you can always take them off the list, right? But make sure you got all your family in there. You know, whether you think you owe them or they owe you, just put them down. You can always smooth that out later. But it's a fact finding and a fact facing process. So how do we get to do that? So in an eighth step, I've been asking people, especially when we don't know what we've done. You know, like I had a lot of husbands whose last names I didn't know. And And And And And And And And And And And And And And And A lot of wives whose first names I didn't know. And so what do you do with that? And prayer with that has brought me to a place where when I ask God how do I deal with my life and the mistakes I've made in some areas, God has brought me sponsees and for the rest of my life, I get my commitment is to treat women with respect and dignity and integrity. And that's the place where I can be effective where I wasn't at some point in the past because they just didn't matter. They were up and making comments. And Do this It's decided. Got the right relationship. To me, Lou Anne, South feel нужно me need something to teach a little bit of up. I don't listen to Republican doctrine of ethics and you know, this is a great step in making the right Unmachenrhut the Control of Many teams. It doesn't come straight. You know, time whine about, make saved that a change. The only other chat there would give. All right. Then cover one. I, uh, I look like man, I'm not from dorm. So you my. And I'm thinking, yeah, that's for me. So I was sober a while, and it occurred to me that this child I had given away, because I'd now sponsored some women who told me their own stories, this child might be looking, he was now a grown man, he might be looking for the woman that had given him away at birth. And in fact, maybe he needed some completion. He needed to talk. And so I set off on about a five-year journey to locate this lad. And in the process, you have made of me a person I'm not ashamed to introduce to a child I gave away, which is a big accomplishment. I don't have to tell you, but I should, that I stalked him when I found him, and went and drove by his house and didn't have to go in. That was a first real success. But I located him. It looked like he was doing okay. And I wrote him a letter. And I wrote him a letter because I have good sponsorship, and it allowed me to give him deniability. I don't have the right to go tromping into somebody else's life. But I told him why. I thought maybe he might be the child I had given away. And if he was that child, maybe he might like to know something about me, and I would be willing to meet with him. I wanted nothing from him, but to give him the opportunity, if he felt that was important. So then I went home. Then I went to my meetings, and I started talking about this. And I kept saying, you know, I've made this letter. I sent it off to the child I gave away. I'm really okay. Okay. I'm going to get this letter. I'm going to get this letter. I'm going to get this letter. I'm going to get this letter. I'm going to get this letter. God and I are good. God and I are good. We're tight. We got it handled. I don't expect anything. I'm perfectly at ease. However this works out. And so about two weeks later, I get a phone call. And this man tells me he is the person he got my letter. And then he said, and, you know, I don't know if I'm adopted or not. They've never told me. But I looked at all the pictures. And it could be me. It could be anyone. But it's not. It's not necessarily me. Because I don't know that I was adopted. But even if I was, I am so not interested in meeting you or knowing you. And I don't care to have another mother. I've already had one. I said, would you be interested in talking to your siblings? Absolutely not. Okay. I had promised what I promised. And I hung up the phone. I hung up the phone. I hung up the phone. I hung up the phone. I hung up the phone. Now, I have told you that for two weeks, I'm going to get this letter. I've been talking about how God and I are okay with this. But I am suddenly curled up on a ball on the couch. Having one more time lied to myself about my intentions, lied to myself about my expectations, and lied to myself about what mattered. I had done this as much for me as I ever did for the child. And I was in a ball. I was sobbing on the couch. I was sobbing on the couch. God works in very funny ways. Phone rang. It was a guy I'd gotten sober with. Well, he was about seven years ahead of me. But Bob, he was there when I got there. And Bob said, Judy, I just wanted to call you and tell you, if you didn't know that you matter in the lives of others, I wanted to tell you today that you matter. I thought, well, that's funny. Good timing. Good timing. And then he said, my wife Eileen has just had a heart attack or a stroke. I don't remember which. And she's in a hospital, and she doesn't remember her own name. But she remembers yours. And she wondered if you'd come give her a hug. And the message was so loud and clear that it stays with me as fresh as that moment. God said in my head, you don't get to tell me. But I will always send you who you need to know. And I will send you those people for you to love and to be with. I will always protect you in that way. So we got dressed and went to the hospital to give Eileen a hug. And that stayed with me, and I've told that story a lot since that time because we frequently expect, I've found that, making amends never is the same as what I invent in my head is going to be the thing that happened. You know, I had gone to this guy's office and I dramatized the whole thing. I was going to open the door. He was going to be on the other side of the door. He was going to look at me. I was going to look at him. We would know instantly. We had a connection. You know, I did this throughout a whole day of, and then what's going to happen is, and then what's going to happen is, none of which, of course, happened. And I was shocked because it's like I had made the story so clear in my own head that I knew how everything was going to work out. Left no room for God to work, did I? Yep, but God made me a promise that I would have what I need, where I need it, and when I need it. And that's a promise that has never failed to materialize. Never. That was one. So if you don't have an immediate successful amend, I want you to know that it's really hard to tell one from the other sometimes because, because, but behind that, behind that, I lost all the anger, and I lost all the fear, and I was able to give him up one more time to the God of our understanding, just as you've taught me to do. So the father, the man that fathered that child, I had no way of dealing with the fact that he had hurt me and he was the first person to have harmed me in my life. I had never been harmed by anybody. I lived a pretty, pretty easy life in some ways. I had never been hurt by somebody I knew, and this had been very deliberate. And so I prayed about it, and prayed about it, and prayed about it over years, never finding a way that I could make an amend to get this guy out of my head. I could not get him out of my head because he had harmed me, and it was so clear. So we were in a relationship, and we were doing a little study in the house around making amends because all of us were postponing them and trying not to make amends. And so we had a little group that was sitting around the kitchen on Saturday mornings for about six months, and some people were color-coding their amends, and some people were alphabetizing, and we were doing everything but actually speaking with another human being. And I had explained how I had no way to make amends, and I had explained to her that I had no way to make amends for something I had not done that had been a harm to me. I just couldn't get it. And I talked about it a couple weeks in a row, and because you know how it is around here, you talk about things and stuff happens. So I was sitting there, and a little voice said, as clear as if somebody turned on the radio, try making, try paying your mother back the money you owe her. What money? What money? I owed my mother money that I had never remembered, and I was saying, I was thinking about this thing, this incident, and I was told to pay my mother back the money I owed her. And it started me thinking about my estrangement from my mother. It hadn't been, we were polite, but not more than polite. I owed my mother money. My mother had loaned me quite a few thousand dollars to start a business when I was, I don't know, 20 or 21. And I had separated my mother from my life because of this child and this incident. And it just separated me from her. My mother was a widow with four obstreperous kids, and what I did was cut her off from anything that was emotionally healing, from any love, from any appreciation, from anything. I had just slammed the door shut. And for the first time when I realized the debt, I began to feel connection to my mother and sadness for what I had done. And my amends to my mother began from that place with that little voice in my head. How does that happen? Here's where I'm thinking, and here's the voice. And then a few months later, having begun to digest all the things that I had done, who was harmed by this thing? I had harmed my mother. I had harmed my mother. She's the one that I had shut down completely. When we sat down and we were able to have a good cry and we forgave each other and I had some things I'd held onto and we were able to talk about them. And when I made amends with my mother, the anguish, the anger and resentment against that man vanished like fog on a sunny morning. It has never come back. I can treat him with the forgiveness of a stranger today and not have that personal sense. He does not own any part of my soul today. It's another gift of the amends process that takes these mysterious routes. I've got four kids. Lou's got two kids. We have this family thing. And early on, it was like, how do you make amends to your kids for having treated them so appallingly all those years? You know, my eldest daughter was in charge of our lives. And she was 10. And she was in charge of her siblings because mother wasn't home. And I held her responsible day in and day out, week in and week out. Something for which she's, you know, it was never a fair fight to do that to another human being. I was not a particularly good parent. I was not at home. So what do you do when you get sober? Because you don't have the right to go back and be the mother of a 10-year-old. She's a grown woman. I owe her respect. I owe her dignity. I owe my children the fact that I've never been a very good parent. And now I'm sober, and they're young adults, or almost in some cases. And I realize I have abrogated my right to tell them what to do. Because I haven't been telling them how to live a life since they were little kids. I have absolutely gone past that point where I'm entitled to that. So I made amends with each of my kids. I told them there was a sibling out there. I told them that I would never lie to them, ever. And that I would be honest with them. And that I would show up differently. And... And I made them some promises. And I also promised them that if at some time in the future they wanted to talk about how this felt to them after they'd thought about it, this was not their only shot at talking to their mother. That I would be willing at any time to hear what they had to say. And we set that up. And we began to do holidays. And holidays looked like, what is it I never had given them, I give them back. I think amends sometimes must be given back in kind. I took from them security. What I owed them was security. And so we would have holidays and we would always try to make sure that the holiday was planned. It was a safe event. There was no trauma. There was no drama. It was a loving place. And it was a place where they could come and feel appreciated and feel as though they were part of something and that they mattered. And we have done that with kids and with grandkids from that point on as a way of making amends for things you can't go back and make amends for. You can't give somebody back years. But you can begin to replace in kind the kind of harms that I believe I have perpetrated on others even though they don't always know that. You know, people don't have to know I've harmed them for me to have harmed them. So sometimes I ask this question and I was talking with my wife and I was talking with somebody earlier and because I'm too self-centered to know what I have done, how do I know where we have amends that are owed each other? And it looks like this. It looks like what lies between me and another person? For us to have a relationship or what's that discomfort? So I'm not, like I said, diving behind the dried fruits at the grocery store when I see them. What is this thing, this piece? And I get a little more sensitive to what might lie between us because harm is a funny word. We can excuse all kinds of impossible behavior and say I never harmed them. And in fact, I don't know always what harm looks like. So where there is damage to a relationship, I can begin to bring it into what might lie between us. My favorite brother, I had two, one's dead, one's alive. Fortunately, the one that's alive is the one I like the best. And he and I have been close since we were kids, but he married somebody I didn't care for. She got him, my prince. And they were married for quite a while and I never liked her. And I get around to making amends. I have never harmed this man in my life. I love my brother. I love my brother deeply. And I've never harmed him to my knowledge. So I sat down with a pencil and a piece of paper, setting my alarm 15 minutes early in the morning for like a month. Was sitting there, kind of meditating, saying what lies between us? What is it? Show me what you would have me see. And I finally, you know, finally it sneaks in. Oh, it's about, it's about family stuff. I talked badly about his wife, called her names for years. And I was totally justified, absolutely sure of myself. I mocked her. I made fun of her. And I didn't think that affected him. I'm so insensitive that I didn't think that that would affect our relationship. So how do you make amends for it? He lives in Ohio. I visit Ohio once or twice a year. And I have a different relationship with her as a way of making amends for the lacks that I had at the time. I believe amends take many forms. And when I sat down with him to make my amends, not saying, well, I always dissed your wife. That's not an amend. One of the things that happens is that when I sat down and I do my eighth step and I look at each one of these things and say, is there harm or is there something between us? What is it I'm to do? He said, well, you could remember to send my kids Christmas cards. I thought, haven't I been doing that? You know, I didn't know what I'd not been doing. I'd separated myself from their life. He's the one I love. They all came with him as baggage. So it's entirely changed. It's upside down. I am closer with his kids. We took a trip with his son this year. You know, it has turned our relationships around. These are relationships that matter to me. They matter deeply to me. But it is through an eighth and ninth step process that I get to that place. Not of finding approval or wrong. I don't think the ninth step or the eighth step is about finding somebody either to blame or to take away blame when there's been real harm done to me. I don't believe that's what it's about. I think we have to be willing to find our way to be another person on the planet with the rest of the humans. We take our place and we let God come in. So I see it as a triangle. That's a triangle. So what about, what between God and me and them is in that triangle? If I am to not create any situation where they have a resentment that separates them from God, how do I deal with that? And if I have a relationship where they and I are separated from God, then I have missed it because that's my amend. This is not for me. This amend is to clear away the past. And you know, it's, the book says things like we arrange the best deal we can, we put all this stuff on a list. So one of the things I use to do when I don't know how to find somebody, and maybe even when I do find them, I picked up from my sponsor who was in prison, and I was told that one of the ways that he dealt with not being able to get out and be free with people was we write the letter, we send a little percentage to show our good faith, we explain what we're doing, I'm wrong, I'm an alcoholic, that format that Chris and I both kind of use the same format, I know I was wrong, I'm an alcoholic, I'm here to balance the books, what will it take to balance the books, what have I forgotten? And I usually say, and I'd like to begin to pay you back the money, or and I'd like to, whatever. And my sponsor said that what he'd done in the prison was he had laid on his cot with each and every person and made the amends in spirit. And you know that affected me a lot. It's not that you don't make them in person, it's that I begin by making those amends in spirit, and I let that whole spiritual forgiveness and that whole spiritual way that people, I ask people to write a letter, it's the same as an index card, that whole thing, sit down and review and make that amend as though that person was sitting right there next to you. And they're not, but it gives me a chance to ask for the kind of forgiveness. We are not supposed to say, I'm sorry, I've been sorry my whole life, I was told. But I am allowed to say, I was wrong, please forgive me. Do you know how hard that is for an alcoholic to say, I was wrong, please forgive me. Like poison. So, you know, we have to lose our fear. So there's, if you're new and you're making a list, there's financial creditors, there's chronology, you can make your list in order of who, who shot who first. You could make your list in terms of the degree of severity. If you're an Ocean's Eleven thief, you just put everybody down there. I did have one of those. And, you know, some of us have lived really exciting lives. And some of us think that all these things are small. So look at your relationships and look at what you've got done, put them down on paper, and then sit with each and every one of you, and invite God into that. Invite God right into the middle of that. By now, we've had a spiritual experience that begins to be significant. It's strong, it's powerful. But we've got to invite God into what we do. We have to do no further harm. Do no further harm is a big deal with us. Otherwise, it's really uncomfortable to make amends for your amends. Take help from God. Take help from God. Take help from God. Take help from God. Take help from God. I don't want to go back and say, you know, when I talked to you about my... well, I didn't mean to talk about her. You know, I'm here to make amends. I'm here to balance the books. I was taught that expression because we're not here to point fingers and make something worse. We're not looking for the guilty parties here. We're looking for unity. And how I approach unity as a tradition, as a ninth step thing, as a family thing, it's all about how do I reach this place of unity the best way possible, you, me, and God. The place of unity. The traditions have taught me that what we do is we seek, will this affect our unity in a positive way? Or will what I'm doing diminish our unity? Because this is a group. This is a group. My family is a group. My group is a group. We are a group. And we're here because we choose to be here. It's the only requirement for this membership this weekend. We choose to be here. So what is it that we can get to do that allows us with our design for living, with our ability to be a contributing member of the rest of the world? This stuff heals me. I think every amend I ever made begins to lighten the load of sadness that I was carrying. And with each and every amend that I made, I begin to restore my own sense of dignity and self-worth. You know, that business of making amends to yourself, make amends to others, you will be making amends to yourself. And with each one, you will come back to this place of if you would have self-esteem, do esteemable acts. If you would have self-esteem, do esteemable acts. This is a way to tie the bow on that whole sense of our alienation and our separation. You don't even have to like people you make amends with. That is not a requirement. It says we can go to the person we hated the most. It does not matter. But we cannot do this without the God of our understanding. Take all the power and let it flow because it's the big universe. And we can tap into that power. We don't ever own it. We tap into it. But it's a pretty big deal. Thank you for letting me share. A little bit about this event. I just want to share with you that this has been a journey. This has been the most exciting thing that I have ever done in my life. To begin coming up here with you guys. It started in 1996 that we had Don P come out for a event at Unity Hall in Maine South for all you guys from Worcester. So we had Don P come out a couple of years and then Jerry E came out for a couple of years. And then we moved up here. And we said for a couple of years we didn't have anybody. We just kind of came up here. kind of came up here as a group, and then all of a sudden we said, you know what, we've got enough people that we can afford to bring Jerry out here. So we decided to bring Jerry out here in roughly 2001 or 2002, and Jerry came out here for 12 or 13 years. And I can't talk about Jerry without tearing up a little bit. For all of you, Don P. was Jerry's sponsor, and Don P. is connected to both of you. And it's been a journey. And at some point it was clear that Jerry was getting a little older and he couldn't make the trip up here in the winter. A couple of years, Dickie and I filled in for him, and when he became sick, when he came up here. And five years ago we determined that we needed to transition, and this event needed to transition from a family gathering of all of Jerry's kids, to a family gathering of all of Jerry's kids. Because for many, many years this was all Jerry's grand sponsees and sponsees, and great-great-grand sponsees, and it was all Jerry's kids. And so we started the transition five years ago, and three years ago when Chris was here was the last year that Jerry came. And we created a sponsor, a scholarship for two people, that we pay for. We asked two people to come here to this event, and they need to do nothing else but get themselves here. And we provide them a room, and we take care of their meals and everything, and so on and so forth. So in Jerry's name, I wanted everybody to know that, and know where we came from and where we're going. So thank you very much. Thank you, Malcolm. Thank you. Thank you.